Nightmare in Accra

I am not paranoid. There IS a conspiracy. Or so I conclude when Dzifa phones this lunchtime to say the Visa requests have not been granted, and the High Commission is asking for further information about accommodation, finance etc. Further information?? When they fly TOMORROW?? And the applications were put in on the 13th of last month?? WITH VALID WORK PERMITS FOR WHICH WE'D ALREADY SHOWN ALL THE FINANCIAL AND ACCOMMODATION INFO???/

I try not to die, and phone the British Council in Ghana. They will phone the High Comm. I will fax through everything I have. Hopefully we can save this..... I can't believe this is happening the day before the flights are booked.

All other problems, including one or two about contracts which would normally make me lose sleep, become as minor irritants in the face of this colossal bureaucratic obstacle.

I try to think back to Saturday night, when I was at the QEH, with Peter Sellars and Tony Guilfoyle, watching Lemi Ponifasio's extraordinary Requiem. So many things drew me to this show - Peter having commissioned it, the fact that it's First Nations work from New Zealand, the LIFT involvement, the idea.... but nothing had prepared me for its truly staggering beauty. It is less a piece of theatre than a liturgy. An act of remembrance and contemplation, and a meditation on our futures. It's everything I talked about at the ORIGINS launch - theatre which brings the deep values of First Nations peoples emphatically and powerfully into the present century.

A very powerful contrast with the chaos of contemporary bureaucratic hell.